Follow this link to see who in your town might be receiving inappropriate welfare payments farm subsidy checks. Republicans will never end farm subisides, because the people who receive them are also the people who vote for them. Democrats will never end them, because they’ve never met a government program they didn’t love as one of their children.

6 Responses to “Suckling at the Teet of Government”

Farm subisides is a government program which divides my home. Dad, who is a Reagan republican, who is against them and mon who is a FDR democrat who loves them. Both rent large farms in Georgia and Alabama.

Personally,I am against them, seeing the purpose they were created in the first place. FDR wanted farmers to stop producing too much food. This doesn’t apply today, instead they are used as a crutch by farmers. Who should be subject to the free market like any other product. They shouldn’t be paid for growing fescu grass and trees, both of which are not a cash crop.

Well I don’t blog about work ((and Bitter can disclose my biases to you) so this will be short.

Sure, there is some problem with the subsidies however, I have two general responses:

1st – we don’t know exactly which programs this is discussing. Is it really for out and out subsidies of the kind to encourage farmers to grow less food (or, really as it occurs now – a loan deficiency payment which is government insurance against a drop in prices below a previously set level (just don’t call it price fixing when Uncle Sam does it :) )) or is it for Food Stamps which come out of the farm bill?

2nd – to what extent are these for conservation program dollars. I actually support fully the conservation title and think its the one bit of environmental legislation that makes sense – private property is sacred and if the government wants you to do something on your property the 5th Amendment says they need to pay you for that. Well, thats what Title II of the farm bill does. I’d be very weary of these general attacks on the farm bill because while they are wiping away some outrageous subsidies they also set the ground for further erosion of our private property rights (don’t you think the Environmental Working Group would love the government to just be able to come on your land and force you to give up 100 yards of field on each side of a stream without paying for it????)

The map seems to have some problems. The dots don’t seem to actually give information on that location (clicking on a dot in New Jersey gives data for West Virginia or North Dakota). Of course, that might be different in Internet Explorer (which I haven’t even bothered trying).